


Old-Fashioned Girl

by withthepilot



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Minor Character Death, Starfleet Academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:53:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthepilot/pseuds/withthepilot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From Starfleet Academy to the Narada and beyond, the enigmatic Nyota Uhura is always at the forefront of Hikaru's thoughts. And, yes, he knows: he's a total dork.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old-Fashioned Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [turdburgler](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=turdburgler).



The first time he ever lays eyes on her, she's wearing jeans—simple, classic blue jeans with a pale rip in one of the knees. She's walking past the threshold of the stairwell and the third-floor corridor of his new dorm building, which he supposes is also her dorm building. The box in her arms looks to be twice as heavy as she is; she only makes it halfway down the hall before it falls, contents spilling everywhere. Hikaru runs to help.

"Oh, jeez, you don't have to," she says, peering up from her crouch on the floor. He doesn't know where to look first: the glimpse of skin peeking out from the tear in the denim or those big, warm eyes. He laughs awkwardly and looks away, kneeling down.

"No worries. Wouldn't want you to lose your...Q-tips," he says, holding up the blue box. "I didn't even know people still used these."

"What can I say; I'm an old-fashioned girl," she replies.

He helps her with the rest of her boxes, even though his parents are waiting in the car downstairs, probably getting impatient. She pats his arm in thanks and it's more than a little awkward but still enough to make him tingle down to his toes, one small acknowledging touch. She smiles politely to him as she backs away from the entrance to her room and shuts the door.

His parents are definitely annoyed with him but it's totally worth it.

*

He finds out a few things about her over time: her name's Uhura, she's of African descent, her favorite color is yellow. Basic yet important things. McKenna, his roommate, finds the whole thing amusing but humors him. After a few weeks, he employs the help of the Russian kid who decided that Hikaru was his hero after he told a bunch of older cadets to stop heckling him in the halls between classes. Chekov's fourteen and brilliant and incredibly eager to please; he's a good person to have around.

"She's in the communications track," Chekov says one day, as he sits down to lunch at their table. "Specializing in xenolinguistics."

"Really?" Hikaru asks, lifting his gaze from his plate in interest. "How many languages do you think she knows?"

"Probably very many," Chekov answers. "Maybe as many as a hundred."

"Riveting," McKenna says, rolling his eyes. "Just write her a love letter in Bajoran, and she'll be putty in your hands."

Hikaru gives him a filthy look, taking a bite of his sandwich. "Shut up." Then he chews quietly, furrowing his brow. He turns to Chekov again. "Does she take Bajoran?"

Chekov smiles knowingly, a little smug for his mere fourteen years, and writes a note to himself in his PADD. "I will find out her schedule," he promises.

A week later, Hikaru finds himself in Klingon 101, thanks to Chekov's ingenious hacking of the registrar's database. Uhura is in Advanced Klingon already, but he figures a beginner's class is better than nothing; plus, he has a foreign language requirement to fulfill, anyway. What's nice is that both classes take place in the same room, one right after the other. Uhura spots him on her way out one day; after a brief look of surprise, Hikaru swears he can see a hint of an impressed smile on her face.

The class is okay. He learns a lot, but not quite enough to write a decent love letter.

*

McKenna keeps telling him he's working too hard and eventually Hikaru lets himself be talked into a blind date. He's surprised when he gets to the restaurant and sees that she's Orion; a minor detail in the scheme of things but one that he might have liked to have known. Her pheromones are all over the charts and he wends his way through the various stages of the date with a pleasant, heady buzz that's not quite akin to arousal but not too distant from it, either. He laughs a lot and lets her spoon-feed him the dessert that they share. He leaves the server an especially generous tip.

He finds himself accompanying her back to her room and he's a little tipsy from one too many Cardassian Sunrises to notice the familiar door. She punches in a code that Hikaru recognizes: one that all academy cadets use when they need to warn a roommate to perhaps find another place to crash for the night, not unlike the old-fashioned practice of leaving a sock on the doorknob.

"Can I use your bathroom?" he says after they go inside. Gaila flicks on the lights and nods, already stripping off her top.

"Sure. I'll change into something more comfortable."

Things are a little less hazy for a minute, what with Gaila in the other room, and he shakes off the pheromones long enough to take a good look around the bathroom after he enters. There's an open box of Q-tips on one of the shelves, wedged between a tub of facial cream and a bottle of styling mousse. He takes one Q-tip out of the box and studies it, then puts it in his back pocket.

"You sure your roommate won't mind that you have company?" he asks as he returns to the bedroom. Gaila shrugs at him, splayed out on the bed and nude, save for her underwear. Her grass-green skin seems to glow in the dark.

"She knows I'd do the same for her if she ever actually brought anyone home."

Hikaru nods, strangely pleased by Gaila's answer. He climbs into her bed and lets her make quick work of his clothes.

*

"You fucked Gaila and then you stole one of her roommate's Q-tips, is what you're saying."

"Gary. Stop making me sound like a pervert."

"Just clarifying for my personal edification."

"Fuck off."

McKenna laughs and orders the lights down to ten percent, their agreed upon dimness for nighttime, even though Hikaru prefers no light at all. Tonight, though, it's okay. He delicately places the pilfered Q-tip on his bedside table and stares at it for a while, until he mentally declares himself a crazy person and goes to sleep.

Two weeks later, he walks by Uhura and Gaila's room and sees a sock hanging from the doorknob.

She did admit that she's old-fashioned.

*

It takes a few months for Chekov to sleuth out exactly who she's seeing, it's such a well-kept secret; when he finally does learn the answer, he nearly insists on keeping it that way. Hikaru doesn't even know who this Commander Spock is at first, but once he finds out, he immediately understands Chekov's reticence. Uhura's such a dedicated cadet; it must be something really special if she's willing to put her career at risk.

He's Vulcan, Spock. Hikaru doesn't know much about Vulcans except that they're basically stodgy and boring. He's read some literature on them, some stuff about deep-seated emotions or whatever. Why she would be into someone like that, he doesn't know. But then, he doesn't really know much about her, anyhow. Just her name and her specialty and her favorite color and the fact that she hangs socks on doorknobs and uses antiquated cotton wads, stuck onto the ends of sticks. And that her smile rivals the luminosity of any given star in any known galaxy.

She starts wearing her hair in a really tight ponytail, which makes her look much more severe. She's still beautiful, of course, but something about her is changing, now that she's seeing the Vulcan. He knows it's not his place to guess at what that might be; it's not his place to do anything. She seems happy and that's all that counts. He hardly ever sees her in the dorm building anymore. Gaila gets wrapped up in that Jim Kirk guy and stops inviting Hikaru over; she can probably sense that he's a lost cause.

He passes Advanced Klingon but doesn't bother trying to write a letter. In the end, it's just another lost cause.

*

One day, out of nowhere, the _Narada_ appears and everything's suddenly fucked. He gets his assignment to the _Farragut_ after the Vulcan distress call comes in and starts walking over to his assigned shuttle when a superior officer grabs his arm and pulls him aside.

"Hold on, Cadet Sulu. Change of plans; you're going to the _Enterprise_."

Hikaru's brow furrows. "I thought McKenna was piloting—"

"No can do. He's got lungworm."

"You're kidding." He knows McKenna hasn't been feeling well lately, but he didn't know it was that bad. "Okay...thanks."

When he gets to the bridge, Chekov turns in the navigator's chair, lighting up at the sight of him. "Hikaru! I heard about McKenna. You'll be my pilot now!"

"And you'll be my navigator," he replies, sitting down in the pilot's chair. He shoots Chekov a quick smile but it's hard to pay him much attention where there's a huge, shiny console to run his hands over. He wants to make conversation, he really does, but he's also trying his damnedest not to geek out at the fact that, holy _shit_ , he's going to be piloting the _Enterprise_.

"It is too bad for Gary," Chekov says, already pressing buttons and doing his thing, like he was born for this, "but is better this way. You and me, we make a good team."

"That's true," Hikaru says, laughing quietly. He feels a wave of relief rush over him that he’s sitting here with his best friend and not alone on the _Farragut_. Zooming off on an unexpected trip to Vulcan before he's even through with his academy training is already scary enough with someone he knows at his side.

"Also," Chekov adds, leaning over and whispering, "guess who is here with us."

He turns around, as if she'll be standing right there behind him, but then Captain Pike comes striding onto the bridge and all extraneous thoughts are forgotten in the face of their mission.

But still, she's here. She's _here_. He wants to believe that this means something.

Hikaru's so busy thinking about the possibilities of kismet, in fact, that he forgets to disengage the inertial dampeners. Piloting-for-Dummies type of stuff. In the ten or so seconds that it takes for him to recognize and correct his mistake, he both curses himself for his idiocy and thanks his lucky stars that she wasn't on the bridge to see it happen. It's not until much later that it truly hits him—that his silly bout of daydreaming probably saved all their lives.

Minutes after sees a battered and charred chunk of the _Farragut_ zoom past the view screen, he swallows hard and volunteers himself for combat.

*

He didn't think he'd see someone die so _soon_. Nor did he think he'd ever bear witness to such disaster, such catastrophe.

There's no hero's welcome for him and Kirk when they return, nothing to celebrate. Olson’s voice is already a fading memory in the back of his mind. What’s worse, Vulcan is obliterated, _gone_ , and the magnitude of the loss strikes him when he looks into Commander Spock's wide, imploring eyes, his long fingers outstretched for a person—his own mother—who's no longer there. He thinks about deep-seated Vulcan emotions and thinks he can see them, for once, right there in the commander's bewildered gaze. He wonders how many people in the universe, beyond the ones gathered here now, in this transporter room, will ever experience such a rare sight.

Then Uhura is there, right there in the room with him for the first time, and all he can think about instead are those elegant Vulcan fingers mapping out the liquid caramel terrain of her skin. The way her long eyelashes must flutter in response. The throaty sound she might make when he touches just the right spot—a songbird's trill.

He lets out a breath when she goes running after Spock, his cheeks suddenly burning with shame. One of the physicians—McCoy, he thinks he hear him say by way of introduction, though Kirk keeps calling him "Bones"—ushers them to Sickbay.

Hikaru gets a look at himself in the mirror before they set to stitching up his cuts, pursing his lips at what he sees in the reflection. He wanted so badly to be a hero.

*

In the end, he gets a taste of redemption, working with brilliant, whip-smart Chekov to hide the ship long enough for a surprise attack. He follows Kirk's orders and fires on the enemy until they're incapacitated, works with Scotty to get them the fuck out of range of that black hole before all their hard work goes down the drain, so to speak.

And then they're okay. Then they're heroes. He shares an incredulous grin with Chekov and Kirk, one that clearly says, _holy_ shit _, we actually pulled it off._

When he turns to look at Uhura, now perched in the communications officer's chair instead of the lieutenant who was there earlier, she's gazing at Spock with hearts in her eyes. Nothing like tragedy to reaffirm love, Hikaru supposes. He knows that Spock and Kirk are going to be lauded as the real heroes when all of this is said and done and it's okay; he did his part and he got to team up with some of the smartest people he's ever known. Despite the inevitable post-traumatic stress, the nightmares he knows are already brewing in the dark of his subconscious, he's going to go home and kiss McKenna for letting him have this, lungworm and all.

He turns back to the view screen, only stars ahead of them now, and makes his peace with it.

*

Being back at the dorms is strange. He feels two feet taller when he walks into his room, all of his belongings seeming so small and meaningless. Some of his more robust plants survived his absence, while the delicate ones succumbed to lack of nutrients and water. He's sad to throw them out, these dependent life forms that have always meant so much to him, but it feels silly to mourn plants in the shadow of where he's been and who he's lost. The halls of the dorms are like ghost towns, the rooms filled with the puzzle pieces of lives now lost forever. He thinks of Uhura, coming back to a room devoid of familiar, sparkling laughter; Gaila was assigned to the _Farragut_ and unlike Hikaru, she actually stepped on board.

He tries to describe the flurry of events to his parents, grandparents and sisters over video chat but finds himself getting confused with the ridiculous amount of details involved, the sheer enormity of it all.

"My poor Hikaru," his grandmother says one night. "The things you have seen." She tsks and sighs until he feels the prickle of tears.

McKenna, of course, spends every day bemoaning the illness that kept him from all the action. He'll get to serve on a starship earlier than expected, as they all will, due to the massive amount of casualties suffered at the hands of Nero, but he craves the action and adventure that Hikaru got to experience in his place.

"Whatever, man," Hikaru says, shrugging and waving a hand. "You're so good, you would have totally been on top of that warp drive and ended up getting everyone killed."

McKenna laughs at that and nods from his seat on the edge of Hikaru's bed. "You're probably right. Good thing you're a total dork, Sulu."

He smiles tightly in response. The thought of McKenna's razor-sharp reflexes plunging all of his friends—both old and new—into the path of immediate death and danger makes it difficult to do anything more.

He starts spending more time with Chekov—Chekov, who was right there with him and also has to adjust to this completely new frame of reference. They eat lunch and dinner together and daydream together about what it will be like when they're pilot and navigator of the _Enterprise_ , respectively. When they find out that Kirk is going to be appointed the new captain, it actually seems like a possibility. But still, Hikaru worries that Kirk will go for McKenna, the original pick for pilot. His gloom is alleviated when Kirk pays him a visit one night.

"Hey, H. McKenna around?" he asks, peering around Hikaru's room from the doorway. He shakes his head and Kirk smiles. "Cool. Listen, Chekov told me you've been biting your nails over my appointments, so I wanted to let you know not to worry. It's totally gonna be you."

"Um," he utters, not wanting to sound too surprised. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. You had my fucking _back_. I'm not going to let someone like you get away. Oh, and I'm also taking Chekov, Scotty, Uhura and Bones. And Spock, if he wants to ever look at my mug again."

Hikaru straightens up, instantaneously feeling a lump in his throat. "That's great, Jim. Thank you."

"Don't mention it. Dream Team, baby." He holds his fist out for a bump and Hikaru indulges him.

It's three weeks before the five-year mission begins. He has a feeling the days will fly by.

*

Two nights before they leave, he gets a visitor. McKenna is out drinking at one of the many anticipatory events leading up to their departure. It seems like every night, there's been some occasion to drink, whether it's to celebrate what lies ahead or to lament what's been left behind. Hikaru is so tired of mourning, of memorializing. He's tired of being asked to express his grief, to share in everyone else's; it's far too much to carry.

He orders the computer to open the door and sees Uhura standing there, a guileless smile on her face. She's wearing jeans again, which he hasn’t seen her in since that very first time they met, and a plain white T-shirt with a little pocket over the breast. He doesn't understand how she manages to look so gorgeous while wearing such plain clothes.

"I wanted to say thank you," she says. Her hands are clasped in front of her, hanging low between her hips. "For what you did out there. Up there," she amends, laughing softly.

Hikaru wants to close his eyes. A songbird, he thinks.

"What did I do?"

"The drill, on Vulcan. All that you and Kirk did to try and save those people and their planet..."

"You mean Spock's people," he replies. Uhura tilts her head and looks down; he takes it as affirmation. "It was nothing," he says on a sigh. "And I don't mean that in a humble way. I mean...we couldn't actually do anything. We were too late. It didn't work."

"But you tried. And I know that meant a lot to him."

"I don't—" Hikaru starts, but then he shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. "I was just following orders. You can tell him that."

"You were heroic," she says. She fixes her gaze upon him and it's like she's asking him for something, but he doesn't quite know what. She twists her hands together, hesitates before shrugging her shoulders. "He didn't send me here. We’re not… It was too much.” She gives a terse smile, obviously forced, and repeats his words: “It didn’t work.”

Hikaru instantaneously feels his heart beat faster, sudden warmth spreading over his nape. He wants to ask why she's here, then—what exactly she wants to say to him. "I'm sorry," he manages to say. She nods and looks away, and he sees the shine of tears building along the rim of her lower lashes.

"I've been trying to stay in my room...now that I'm not with him. But it's like...I can _feel_ her there. I can even smell her…and I miss her."

"Of course," he whispers. He barely knows what he's doing as he gently takes her by the wrist and leads her inside his room. He half wonders if this is a hallucination, the side effect of a disease he picked up in space, something a Romulan injected him with when he wasn't paying attention. "You can take McKenna's bed; he probably won't be back tonight, knowing him."

"Okay, Sulu. Thank you."

He gives her a long T-shirt to wear and she looks so small in it, curled up in McKenna's bed. Hikaru busies himself with his nightly routine which, for the past two years, has included a thorough cleaning of the ears with Q-tips. He almost laughs at how ridiculous this place—not to mention this girl—has made him. By the time he goes to bed, she's already fast asleep.

*

"Sulu. Ah...Hikaru."

He opens his eyes to the darkness of his room and sees the outline of Uhura's face above him, her hair flowing freely over her shoulders. Still half-asleep, he reaches up and runs his fingers through it. She smiles at him, bright and wide, and he's dazzled for a moment before he realizes what he's doing.

"God, I'm sorry," he blurts. Then he realizes she's kneeling on the bed—his bed. And she's touching him back: his temple, his cheek, his jaw.

"You know, Gaila used to say that you were in love with me," she whispers. "I never believed her. But then I just went into your bathroom, and..." She giggles and shakes her head and Hikaru groans, turning away from her instinctively, even as he starts to laugh.

"Oh, god. I almost hurtled head first into a black hole and I didn't feel half as queasy as I do right now."

"I'm nervous, too," she admits, laying a hand on his chest. "About everything. The unknown. What might happen to me...to us. Nothing can really prepare us; we saw that."

He looks into her eyes, trembling only slightly under her hand, and pulls her down so she can drape herself over his body.

"You won't be alone," he promises her. And he can do that, because even if something happened to him or to Spock, he believes in all of them, knows they'll watch over her—their Dream Team. "We're all still here for a reason."

She smiles and kisses him, then, and it's nothing like the mind-melting scorcher he once imagined; just soft and tender and a _comfort_. He wraps his arms around Uhura and breathes shakily as she kisses his chin, jaw and the sensitive spot just beneath his ear. As badly as he wants to reciprocate, he doesn't yet move a muscle. It's several hours before they have to get up and face the day and for once, they've got time.

"And what reason is that?" she asks. Hikaru thinks back to his moment of truth on the _Enterprise_ bridge, his now fabled error.

"I found out my crush was on the same starship as me," he says, shrugging. "Kind of messed with my flow." He can't help but laugh at himself now—his ridiculous, lucky-as-fuck self—and Uhura laughs brightly along with him, his old-fashioned girl with her old-fashioned smile.

"It's funny," she says, "how things work out. I was supposed to be on the _Farragut_ , you know."

For an instant, Hikaru forgets to breathe, forgets how to do anything but stare and stare. Then he surges up and kisses the questioning look right off her face, holding onto her as tightly as one can hold onto something real. He revels in this moment, which feels purely crafted from stardust and twists of fate. Finally, after all these years, Hikaru crafts his long-standing love letter with careful fingertips and roaming kisses along her fine china cheekbones, a messy scrawl on a silken canvas—not in Klingon or even Standard, but a language they don't teach at the academy.

Clever girl that Uhura is, she pulls him close and speaks it right back to him.


End file.
